


When reality breaks fantasies

by Rogercat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anti Rhaegar Targaryen, Canon Divergence - Robert's Rebellion, Elia Martell Deserves Better, Gen, Lyanna Stark Bashing, Not Rhaegar friendly, Queen Elia Martell, Rhaegar Targaryen Bashing, Rhaegar Targaryen Being an Idiot, Rhaella Targaryen Lives, anti lyanna stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27286690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogercat/pseuds/Rogercat
Summary: Elia knew how to act against her husband and the Stark girl, by making a alliance with Robert and Rhaella
Relationships: Elia Martell & Rhaella Targaryen, Robert Baratheon & Elia Martell
Comments: 24
Kudos: 151
Collections: Southern Renaissance (Dorne Renaissance)





	When reality breaks fantasies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingsofthenight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingsofthenight/gifts).



> A sort of What could have been AU

She had been saved from Dragonstone with her daughter and son by her cousins arriving with a ship to bring her home to Dorne as soon as uncle Lewyn realized why Rhaegar vanished with the Stark girl. 

“I fully agree with Rhaella on this. We need to act as quickly as possible, to avoid a possible civil war. Rhaegar can not be trusted to become a good King, for what sort of married husband of two children leaves with his own second-cousin's betrothed?” Elia said as they sailed towards Dorne, after that she had sent away a raven with a message for Robert Baratheon about how to solve this mess without bloodshed. 

“Aye. Dorne will not accept this humiliation that you have now suffered twice, cousin, despite that Aegon is the next heir after his father.” 

Without Elia and her children as hostages, Aerys could not force Dorne to stand on the side of the royal family in case of a civil war. 

  
  


The deaths of lord Rickard and Brandon Stark could not be prevented, but they served as a legal motive for Robert to ally with Elia in the offer she had given him: 

To overthrow Aerys and Rhaegar, so that Aegon could be crowned as the new King of Westeros despite his young age with her and Rhaella as Queen Regents for him over the following one and a half decades. Because, as Elia wrote in the letter to Robert, she was the legal wife who had been shamed by her own husband, and Rhaegar did not exactly respect the intended marriage alliance between Houses Stark and Baratheon by running off with Lyanna. If the Stark daughter had been kidnapped, well, then that meant Rhaegar was not the heroic knight in shining armour as he made everyone think previously, and if Lyanna had voluntarily chosen to run away with him, yes, then she had shamed her whole family and the North by not honoring the marriage she would have. Lyanna Stark should have known that an arranged marriage was the norm among her social status, and that romantic love had nothing to do with it. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

In the Red Keep, Rhaella showed that she had enough of her abusive marriage and the actions of her firstborn son, when Aerys found himself strangled by his sister-wife the final night he spent in her bed, by Rhaella using the very same laced headscarf that she wore as a married woman since their wedding so long ago. 

“ _ I WAS NEVER UNFAITHFUL!! ALL MY DEAD CHILDREN WAS SIRED BY YOU, BROTHER!! CURSED BE THAT DAMNED WOOD WITCH THAT JENNY BROUGHT TO COURT, AND CURSED BE OUR PARENTS IN THE SEVEN HELLS FOR MAKING US MARRY!! _ ”

By the time that the Kingsguard realized that something was not normal inside the bedchamber belonging to Rhaella, it was too late. The King laid dead in the bed, killed by the very wife he had mistreated for so long. 

“Lewyn! Jaime! Give the Dornish soldiers the signal to overtake the Red Keep!” 

It had not taken much to convince the son of Tywin Lannister to join Rhaella and Lewyn in their plot to help Elia make Aegon the new King, not after that he had witnessed the truth of the Kingsguard. And now they worked together to clean the path. 

  
  


Only a few weeks after that Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark had vanished together, and mere days after the news of thar Aerys had died in his sleep, a calling was heard in the Stormlands, the North and Dorne: 

**_Aegon VI Targaryen. The son of Princess Elia Martell._ **

Thanks to that Jaime had been promised to be released from the Kingsguard on the grounds that he was not even of age when he joined the famed knights protecting the royal family, he could make his father and the Westerlands to join in as well. The rebellion to replace Rhaegar with his own infant son on the Iron Throne had begun. 

~X~X~X~X~X~X 

The Rebellion turned out to be a successful one once it turned out that Rhaegar had hidden away with Lyanna in Dorne of all places, something that was viewed as yet another disrespect for his legal wife by using her own homeland as a hiding place. 

“I truly regrets that we did not find them before it was too late to abort the bastard my idiotic husband planted in her womb,” Elia spoke to the deeply hurt Robert when they got some very unwelcomed news from Doran; that Lyanna Stark was pregnant with Rhaegar's illegitimate child. 

“I promised her at Harrenhal that Mya would be the only child of mine born outside marriage! That she would not have to fear that I would openly shame her by having mistresses! She is the sister of my very good friend, how could I ruin his friendship by ill-treating her?!”

Elia let the young Lord of Storm End grieve over how little Lyanna had trusted his promise. Yes, Robert was the sort of man that would be a maiden's fantasy image of a powerful and handsome knight, in a very different way than Rhaegar, and perhaps he was a little too fond of women as a flaw, but he was also firmly set in reality rather than a dream world of prophecies and ancient writings. 

“Mellario has just gotten a response from her family in Norvos. Lyanna Stark shall be a servant in their home, as a part of her exile from Westeros until that Aegon is of age. And the fate I intend for the child in her womb...the Wall for a son as my husband is locked up for life in the so-called Tower of Joy as he ironically named it, and the Faith for a daughter.”

With Rhaegar locked up in the very same tower where he had been found with Lyanna, Elia intended to slowly make him go insane for real over the coming years from isolation from human contact and the very fate that could have been his. If he took too long to die naturally, well, Oberyn would surely help by adding something _ extra  _ in his food rations at some point. 

  
  


In front of all the important rebels little over half a year after the death of his paternal grandfather, Aegon VI was crowned by his paternal grandmother Rhaella by using the simple gold circlet once worn by Aegon III and Aegon V, when he was little over a year old. 

“Long live King Aegon Targaryen, the Sixth of his Name!” 

Officially, Elia was considered a legal widow as the official fate of Rhaegar was that he had been sent to the Wall after being deposed from his very short-lived reign by the rebels and taken the vows of the Night's Watch. Only two days earlier, Lyanna Stark had given birth to a son that had been taken away from her straight away because Elia did not want rumors about a new Daemon Blackfyre to be spread, and Ned Stark was not allowed to bring him along on the journey back to the North, in fear that he would disobey the orders about that the boy would be given to the Night's Watch. 

“This is the reality that broke your fantasies, Rhaegar, Lyanna!” Elia thought, as she held her son in her arms, “I am the mother of the legal heir, and I refused to go down in history as the unworthy wife from Dorne!” 

Robert would act as a protector to Aegon and Rhaenys because he had grown fond of her children despite their paternity, and Lyanna would never meet the son she had with Rhaegar. There would not be a second coming of Daemon Blackfyre against a half-brother born from a Dornish mother. 


End file.
